Viewpoint: What West must do in Ukraine

Viewpoint: What West must do in Ukraine

By Anatol LievenProfessor, Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Qatar

It wouldd be folly for the West to arm Ukraine, argues Prof Anatol
Lieven in this personal viewpoint piece, but it must take a tough
diplomatic line.

If the latest ceasefire in eastern Ukraine breaks down, then
there will be increased pressure on President Barack Obama by hawks in
Washington - Democrat as well as Republican - to provide arms to
Ukraine, and on European leaders to acquiesce in this.
In the view of a range of analysts and former officials on
both sides of the Atlantic, this seems a singularly ill-thought out
strategy. Lesson from history
More importantly, the advocates of arming Ukraine do not
appear either to have sufficiently analysed the actual balance of forces
on the ground, or to have studied a key lesson from recent history:
namely, what happened to Georgia when its government launched an
offensive against separatist rebels and their Russian backers in South
Ossetia in August 2008.
After brief initial gains, the Georgian army was crushed by new Russian forces.
This apparently lunatic Georgian move is only comprehensible
if President Mikheil Saakashvili believed that the USA would intervene
militarily to prevent Georgia's defeat.
Of course it did not, nor had any such promise ever been made by the Bush administration.
But the Georgians could have been forgiven for not realising
that, given that they had received weapons, extravagant political
support, and a promise of future Nato membership from Washington.

What happened in Georgia?

A Russian armoured troop carrier passes a house set on fire by South Ossetian militia in August 2008

In August 2008, tensions between Georgia and Russia escalated
into a full-blown military conflict after Georgia tried to retake South
Ossetia by force after a series of lower-level clashes with
Russian-backed rebels.

Russia launched an overwhelming counter-attack, ejecting
Georgian troops from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and subsequently
recognising the two breakaway regions as independent states.

Against the background of this history, it cannot be emphasised
too strongly that, for the foreseeable future, however many weapons the
Ukrainian army receives from the USA, if it gets into an open fight
with the Russian army, it is likely to lose, and lose catastrophically.

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Russia's leaders might want to
reflect on the fact that by the same token, for the first time in
history Russia has been under no real threat of attack from the West”

So far, very limited numbers of
lightly disguised Russian troops have been enough to bring to a
standstill the entire fighting strength of the Ukrainian army - last
autumn, the Nato estimate was that a mere 3,000 Russian soldiers were
present in the Donbas.

With massive US arms supplies, the Ukrainian army might well
be able to launch an initially successful offensive against these forces
and their local separatist allies. But what then?
All the evidence suggests that the Russian government simply
cannot afford the humiliation of a Ukrainian military victory. In other
words, as in August 2008 in Georgia, Moscow would respond with greatly
increased military force.
In the highly unlikely event that the USA then sent its own
troops to help Ukraine - which has already been repeatedly ruled out -
we would be in a European war between nuclear powers. If it did not, the
Ukrainian army would risk the high probability of defeat, and if so,
the USA and Nato would be severely humiliated. Territory struggle
In August 2008, after smashing the Georgian army, Russia
briefly occupied parts of Georgia proper - beyond the borders of the
separatist territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia - and then
withdrew.
Since neither Russia nor the separatists had any historical
or ethnic claim on these strategically worthless Georgian territories,
there was no reason for them to stay.
Russian attitudes to eastern and southern Ukraine are very
different. If the Russian army ever marches into Kharkov and
Dnipropetrovsk, they are very likely to stay.

oad Flash Player nows reports on the moment Ukrainian prisoners of war were released

Ukraine can survive without Donetsk, Lugansk and the Crimea.
Indeed, it could be seen as a stronger and more homogenous state without
them, as the election of President Petro Poroshenko demonstrated.
The loss of a third of the country would be a very different matter.
The partition of Ukraine would indeed mark a return to the
Cold War, implying vastly increased European military spending, and
colossally increased aid to Ukraine intended to prepare the country for
early membership of the European Union - something for which the EU is
utterly unprepared.
The duty of Western leaders therefore is to try to make sure that the present ceasefire works.
Despite the battle for Debaltseve, there is some chance that
it may work - or at least, a better chance than that of previous
attempts.
This is above all because it includes a critical element
missing from those attempts: a political solution tied to a specific
timetable, and one which allows all the main parties to the conflict to
achieve their most important goal (with the possible exception of the
separatist leadership in the Donbas).
Concurrently with the withdrawal of heavy weapons, dialogue
is to begin on holding local elections in the rebel territories, in
accordance with the Ukrainian law on provisional autonomy for the
region. Reopen economic ties
The Ukrainian parliament has to pass a resolution on this within 30 days of the ceasefire.

Continue reading the main story

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For the ceasefire to hold and a
political solution to be reached, the governments of France and Germany
will have to show an unwonted degree of resolve and toughness over the
next year”

By the end of 2015, Ukraine is
to regain full control of its borders in the east; but also by the end
of 2015, a new Ukrainian federal constitution has to be adopted
incorporating special autonomous status for the Donbas.

In the meantime, the government in Kiev will reopen economic
ties with the Donbas and resume paying official salaries in the region -
thereby helping in the process of reintegrating it into Ukraine.
For Kiev and Western governments, this agreement secures
their most important goal of preserving the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Ukraine, minus Crimea, with a central government which
preserves the ability to conduct desperately needed reforms.
This is a goal which could otherwise only be achieved through
victorious war - and whatever hawks in the USA may think, any
full-scale war between Ukraine and Russia will almost certainly result
not in Ukrainian victory, but in a crushing Ukrainian defeat and the
further dismemberment of the country.
Moreover, trying to turn Ukraine into a country capable of
planning such a war would require a degree of authoritarian nationalism
which would move Ukraine not closer to the European Union, but even
further away from it.

For Russia, this deal preserves the Donbas as a distinct
autonomous area within Ukraine. A federal constitution would also help
guarantee the position of Russian-speaking areas of the country against
any move to forced ukrainianisation from Kiev.
From Moscow's point of view, this would also make it much
more difficult to move Ukraine into the West's military camp without a
strong consensus behind this in Ukrainian society - a consensus which
was present in central European countries during their move to join
Nato, but which has never existed in Ukraine.
This is the main sticking point as far as hardliners in both
Ukraine and the US are concerned: that the present deal will make
Ukraine's membership in Nato and the EU impossible. 'Long and painful changes'
In actual fact, however, these are non-issues. By repeatedly
stating that under no circumstances will Nato troops be sent to defend
Ukraine, Nato seems to have rendered the idea of Ukrainian membership an
unlikely prospect.
As for EU membership, it's unlikely any West European leader
has ever considered this as more than the remotest of prospects, decades
in the future and dependent on a whole series of extremely long and
painful changes.
This is a decision therefore which would in all circumstances have to be left to a future generation.
Moreover, given the economic reality of Ukrainian economic
dependence on Russia, salvaging Ukraine's collapsing economy can only be
done in co-operation with Russia, not against her.
Unless, that is, the EU is prepared to demand from West
European populations enormous sacrifices for the sake of helping
Ukraine. Anyone who believes that is likely should have a brief
conversation with a Greek.

James Reynolds reports from Debaltseve, "a town almost too dangerous to live in"

For the ceasefire to hold and a political solution to be
reached, the governments of France and Germany will have to show an
unwonted degree of resolve and toughness over the next year.
On the one hand, they will have to make clear to Moscow that
the relaxations of sanctions against Russia will only come as a result
of clear and consistent pressure on the Donbas rebels to abide by the
terms of the ceasefire and to pursue autonomy within Ukraine, and not
independence.
On the other hand, they will need to make clear to the
Ukrainian government and to hardliners in Washington that significant EU
aid to Ukraine, and an eventual path to possible EU membership, both
depend on Kiev honouring the promise of real autonomy for the Donbas.
The present ceasefire and the associated political process
are not perfect, but they present the best chance so far of ending this
conflict, preserving by far the greater part of Ukraine as a unitary
state, and avoiding an escalation of the war that would most probably be
very bad for Russia and the West, and absolutely disastrous for
Ukraine.Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown
University in Qatar and author among other books of Ukraine and Russia: A
Fraternal Rivalry.

About Me

Ambassador T. Brikins is a Writer Blogger, Mass Communications Consultant and Inforpreneur having experiences in the National News Media, Oil and Gas, Administration, University and the Church of Christ..
He is C.E.O. @ New Direction Communications..
He is an ordained Minister and heavily imparted by Dr. David Oyedepo, Pastor E.A.Adeboye, Rev.Roselyn Oduyemi, Kenneth Copeland,Dr. D.Yongi Cho, Apostle Alex Bamgbola, Kenneth E. Hagin, Apostle G. Oduyemi, Archbishop Benson Idahosa, T.L. Osborn,Dr. E.W. Kenyon , Oral Roberts and many more.
Ambassador T. Brikins runs with the visions of Isaiah 11:9; Matthew 23:23 and 11 Corinthians 5:16-21 working with the Lord for their practical expressions in every area of life. .
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